The U.S. Second Circuit Court of Appeals said in a ruling Monday that it was “premature” to certify a class, saying the district court should first have to consider Google’s arguments that it could display snippets of the books under the so-called fair use doctrine of U.S. copyright law. Certifying a class would have allowed the authors to pursue the lawsuit as a group, rather than a series of individual cases.

Google’s battle to make the pages of books available online stretches back to 2005, when a group representing writers called the Authors Guild filed suit. In March 2011, a federal judge rejected a 2008 settlement between Google and several groups representing authors and publishers, saying the $125 million deal would allow Google to “exploit” books without the permission of copyright owners.